the city sewer, which runs down the valley to the Pool of Siloam, I availed myself of this fortunate opportunity to widen and deepen the excavation, and did not find the slightest indication of a bridge. Josephus[313] states that when Pompeius approached the city with his forces, the partisans of Aristobulus, on retreating to the Temple, cut off the bridge. He alludes to it again on other occasions[314], and to the tower near it, built by Simon to defend himself against John. What then has become of the ruins of this bridge and of the tower? Though now, as on Ophel and part of Sion, there may be open fields on the site of some parts of ancient Jerusalem, numbers of stones, as I have already described[315], are scattered about; why then does not the same thing happen in the Tyropoeon valley, where the great accumulation of rubbish would have buried the fallen blocks and preserved them from the action of fire? Besides, the rock exposed in the eastern slope of Sion is rough and rugged, and untouched by the chisel; there is no part of it that we can suppose to have supported a building. I have also excavated along by the side of it in the valley below and found nothing. I have examined the lower parts of the Arab houses, which some have imagined to be built upon its foundation, but all my investigations have confirmed me in my opinion that the bridge never stood upon this spot. Had it done so, why, as we see the pier on the east, do we not see some corresponding remains on the west; or if not these, the place where the spring-stones of the arch rested upon the rock? I believe the bridge mentioned by Josephus was near the present _Mekhemeh_ (the Mohammedan Court of Justice), which is on the west of the _Haram_, at the bottom of Temple Street, because at this point the valley is still crossed from west to east by arches, sustaining the conduit which brings the water from Etham into the Temple, and the ground south of this, on the opposite side, formerly occupied by the Xystus, has been levelled. The height of this bridge or dyke above the street is 38 feet on the south, and 20 on the north; which, it must be remembered, is not the true elevation of the work itself; because the ground has been raised on each side by the accumulation of rubbish in the bottom of the Tyropoeon. This, in my opinion, joined the Upper city to the Temple-hill in former times, as it now does. It is surely very improbable that the principal approach to the Temple from the west should have been placed at one corner, instead of in the centre of the enclosure; as would have been the case had the great arch formed part of a bridge while that building was standing: and when this was broken down, the communication with the Temple would not have been cut off, as the dyke would still have been a more direct and convenient road from the city.